The present invention relates to a portable terminal device to be carried by a bank solicitor to a customer site to transmit and/or receive data to and from a central unit through a telephone set at the customer site to carry out transactions, or to be carried by an insurance company solicitor to a customer site to transmit and/or receive data to and from a central unit through a telephone set at the customer site to refer goods and prepare an agreement.
In addition to services by bank window machines (WM) for supporting transactions such as deposition and payment of money, auto-cash dispensers (CD) and auto-teller machines (ATM), banks provide solicitor services in which bank solicitors go to customer site to provide services. The transaction services in bank sites are mechanized such that WM, CD and ATM installed in the bank sites are connected to a central unit via a communication line and bank operators or customers operate the machines. On the other hand, the solicitor transaction services are handled primarily by manual operations of the solicitors and they need preparation prior to the solicitor services and postprocessing after the solicitor services (such as entry of transactions occured during the solicitor services to passbooks by the machines installed in the bank sites and return of the passbooks to the customers). Accordingly, the efficiency of solicitor work is low. Further, it is impossible to refer file content to a central unit from a customer site. Thus, sufficient customer service is not provided.
Recently, in an attempt to improve the work efficiency of the bank solicitor and enhance the customer service, a portable terminal device has been developed which can be carried by the bank solicitor to the customer site and connected to the central unit via the telephone set at the customer site to transmit data to enable the same processing as the machines installed in the bank site, at the customer site. In the field of insurance solicitors and other sales solicitors, a portable terminal device has also been developed, which enables the solicitor or salesman to carry it to a customer site and connect it to a central unit through a telephone set at the customer site so that information can be referred or an agreement can be instantly issued.
The prior art business supporting terminal devices such as MW, CD and ATM are usually permanently installed in the bank sites or automatic machine centers. Accordingly, for each transaction, the authorization of a transaction operator is checked in order to prevent unauthorized transaction.
By way of example, in order to identify a person, a secret number unique to a customer is previously provided to the customer and a magnetic card (MC) having the secret number recorded thereon by invisible magnetic record information is issued to the customer. When the customer wants to transact business by CD or ATM, the record on the MC is first read by the machine and then the customer enters the secret number which he or she memorizes, by a keyboard. The machine compares the secret number recorded on the MC and the key-entered secret number to check if there is a predetermined relation there between and permits the entry of transaction data only when the predetermined relation is detected. Such a personal identification method using MC and the secret number is well known.
The prior art transaction supporting terminal devices are usually installed permanently, need individual communication lines to connect them to the central unit and are not moved. On the other hand, the portable terminal devices as described above can be carried with ease and can be connected to the central unit from any place through the telephone set or a wireless transceiver. They are also easy to operate and handled at a public place. Accordingly, security is not sufficient by merely checking the validity of the user as is done in the prior art devices. For example, the following problems may be encountered.
(1) An authorized operator (such as solicitor) wrongfully transacts deposition by the portable terminal device beyond control of a manager and receives cash from CD or ATM, embezzles the cash and escapes.
(2) A thief who stole the portable terminal device acts in the same way as (1) above.
(3) The operator is threatened by some person and forced to make an unauthorized deposition transaction, and that person receives cash by CD or ATM, embezzles the cash and escapes.
Those problems are not resolved by merely identifying the transaction operator.